capitols and alliances
by the other ghost girl
Summary: over a decade after the revolution ended with rebel victory Katniss and Peeta have settled down in what used to be district 12, one day the birds go silent and a strange hovercraft lands,the crew tells tales of what lies beyond the stars, and another war


About a hundred or so years ago earth got so polluted by our own greed that the smoke , ash and chemicals of our corporations made the sun almost impossible to see. Unfortunately the sun's heat wasn't blocked by this cloud of smoke. If anything it increased it. By the time we realized that this was a problem that went beyond having to wear suits outside of the protection and security of a city's air purfication dome it was already too late. Even crops and trees grown inside these bio-domes (I believe that's what they called them in those days) where beginning to get sick and die, this caused a major problem due to the fact that they where grown not only for food but for oxygen. To add to the pandemonium all of the glaciers where melting at a highly increased rate, normally this wouldn't be a problem because a device had been created to help keep sea levels from rising and recycle the melted ice into fresh drinking water, However it had never been designed to handle so much water at once and failed. The water began to swallow land until a few isolated areas crowded with refugees were left. So all of the world's governments got together and came up with a plan, they would work together and use all of their knowledge on space travel and terra forming (some of the technology used in the biodomes) as well as the few ships that had been developed for long space voyages but never used in reality.

Some of their best and brightest quickly got to work on repairing the ships and adjusting the ones with cryo-chambers to become more fuel efficient with more fail safes. It took plenty of precious time and only a few of the countries in the alliance had made the ships. America and China proceeded to make an uneasy alliance and built one of the biggest fleets. Unfortunately even with the deaths by biodome failure and drowning weren't enough to cut the population down enough to fit everyone on there. So the leaders of the two countries decided, in a true political fashion, to get the rich people on first and worry about the rest latter. Most of the spots on the fleet for civilians were taken by the top 1% (I have no idea what that means, even though I looked for the term in every account in the records from that time) Their extended family and friends and some of their favorite employees, servants and their families. Since their guest list could be quite long the governments only allowed the rest of the civilians to be composed of athletes in top physical condition that hadn't already boarded and some of the lower class individuals that were healthy and strong. Neither of these groups were allowed to bring family members on board and some were taken by force. It also goes without saying that among those that could escape were government and political figures. Some of them even had private shuttles simply for their family. Some of those the government wouldn't allow on board scrapped together enough cash to repair one of the older space craft and update it a little and POSSIBLY install cryo-chambers. Those who were to sick or too poor to do this were left to rot. While most countries, even Britian got almost all of it's peoples with none even arguing about leaving mother earth behind.

A few eccentrics from various countries and a few political leaders had gotten together in the time it took for the all of the nations' fleets to be built and decided that this was a perfect chance to rebuild the earth and build a new, more efficent society to rule it. After deciding that what was left of the united states was the largest and least rugged of the remaining land they got all of the most advanced technology and even a few top scientists and claimed the least damaged ghost town as their capitol. After installing the improved bio domes in the 13 most highly populated area they told the lower class that they would be taking over and that to best ensure their survival each area would have a specialized area based on the resources that where left. This is where our choppy records and their choppy records about this time have to be mixed together to try to get some kind of semblance of historical accuracy. As far as we can tell the lower class was fine with this arrangement at first because even though they were pretty much the poor wretches that were too poor for society to be troubled with caring for they weren't stupid. They knew that if they were going to survive everyone had to do their part, and they were grateful that at least some of the upper class had thought about them and stayed behind so they wouldn't choke to death on someone else's greed, As the years went on and the top scientists began to use some of the surplus terra-forming devices that had been left behind to make the enviroment more suitable for life outside of the bio-domes, and the lower class just barely scrapped by and helped other communities if they needed help.

But because of the toxicity of the air outside of the bio-dome and the amount of oxygen that could be stored in their "OXY-PACKs" as well as the distance between communities meant that supplies had to be passed from through communities and trips to the capitol of the new nation where the upper class lived were limited to a lucky few a hand full of days out of the year. So the communities had to go by what their representatives told them about it, and they mostly told them that the upper class toiled just like the rest of them as well as developing new technology and harvesting clean water from the ground to be shipped to the communities. The day that they found out they'd been bushwacked was the day it was announced that the air outside the bio-domes was safe to breathe again and that they where all invited to the capitol for a feast. Everyone in all of the communities dressed up in their best washed with what little water they where allowed for bathing and started went to several of the check points where vehicles would pick them up.

When they arrived at the capitol they expected former socilites (probably a little more well dressed and groomed) with eyes and hands weary from work and to be greeted with enough food that they fatten themselves with to keep possible starvation a little longer. They might have expected the shining metropolis that might serve as a model for what the other communities would become in time. But they never expected to be greeted by fat, happy people who complained heartily when they had to walk across town to get a loaf of bread, and had never seen a day of real work in their lives. If there had been a huge banquet set aside for the lowly commoners that had toiled so that they could live in luxury, filled with the best foods that their chefs could offer, they might have forgiven them, However the "feast" was composed of a few tough stringy pieces of meat and grain on different tables for each community. Although the communities where furious that they had been tricked into doing all the work and coming dressed up when they probably could have been naked for all they cared,when the representatives and the leader of the capitol came to the stage above the stage they hid their confusion and anger to listen to what they had to say. They explained that this was a part of a new program to reward the communities for their hard work, If a community was determined to have done a good job that year they would receive extra food throughout the year in addition to whatever they produced locally. They told them that helping another community was forbidden because this was a competition and no alliances were allowed.

Most of the tables with the least amount of food on them belonged to the communities that needed them most, and hadn't harvested much due to deaths from starvation because their land was difficult to farm. They rioted and began to throw anything they could find that wasn't nailed down. Very few of those who attended survived. Around this time our government had it's own problems with rebels, and communications between the two were cut off. Although the rebel communities destroyed many of the accounts from this time period we gather that they lost and that the leaders of the capitol gathered and decided the best way to deal with this. They came up with a solution that seemed to solve two problems. 1) it punished the communities in a way they would never forget 2) since the rich never thought to convince some of the great writers of their country entertainment was based on the latest fashions and the lives of the richest and self centered among them, they began to crave action and real gritty drama, which this could provide.

However lovely this solution sounds and how much it sounds like something that should have been done to our rebels this is only the thinking behind it. The truth was that this solution was to choose two children from each community or "district" one male, and one female, and put them into a contained landscape, or arena, and have them fight to death until only one remained and reward them with a constant supply of food and free healthcare and a year of free food for their district. The others would get nothing. Then they cut off communication with our ships because even though our government has hurt children it was in the name of science, not entertainment. This continued until about 25 years ago when the resistance came out of hiding and fought back and this time they won. 15 years after-wards a crew of outlaws seeking somewhere to hide from the alliance rediscovered earth, fit for habitation, and hid among new fledgling government of the country called "Panem"

I wasn't born on Panem, and I'm what my wife's people (she was born on earth survived the revolution) call an otherworlder. The old earth term I believe would be aliens. I'm rambling a little I know, but I'm here to tell the story of the rediscovery of earth through slightly embellished first person accounts. Both from a few residents of Panem, as well as the outlaws. I'll move on to the actual account in the next chapter but I believe that you needed a frame of reference.

Keep flying,

The author


End file.
